Adding insult to injury

A quick one today, but I had to share.

This afternoon my work’s resident crazy lady came round to speak with me. I say “crazy” as she just acts in a way that is usually a bit much for most people. (She went off on maternity leave a while ago and when she had the baby, she sent round pictures to everyone in our larger team, including the really important people, of the baby freshly born – with blood and guts and aspects of her that really should remain out of the workplace. It went down in my workplace history… Is she the one who… Yeah.)

Despite me doing my best to look busy, and in response to her “Are you busy?” saying “Yes I am busy!” she decided to natter at me for approximately 10 excruciating minutes. There was small talk, including probably some kind of tentative request for me to give her some work (the word hellsno springs to mind) and then she decided to move it onto personal life.

I’d like to preface this by saying that I am not one of those people who likes to bring my personal life to work. Maybe it will happen, to the closest of work colleagues, but I’m even one of those people who doesn’t like to be on Facebook with colleagues. (At my last place, they used to think this was hilarious and would try and find me on Facebook until I blocked them all.) I mean, I just don’t think you need to share that much with your colleagues. (I did once, with my ex… and we all know how that turned out. Work/life separation, I think.)

So she’s like, “And how’s your personal life?”And I said, in a very British way, “Yes it’s fine”. She’s not British which maybe explains why she’s so g/d ignorant of the British unwritten law which says “If I say the word fine, that means we aren’t going to talk about this any longer.” (Think about it. Fine in British is kind of like the opposite of fine. It basically means F-off, in a polite way.)

She took this as an invitation to talk longer, despite the fact that I was staring at my laptop and trying to do a jedi mind trick on her to just go away and leave me alone.

“Where are you living?”

Umm, I’m fairly sure you’re never going to be invited round there, so why do you need to know?

I told her where I was living. Vaguely, with not enough detail for her actually to track me down, though I wouldn’t put it past her. She has that sort of glint in her eye.

“Maybe you should move to X, near me.”

WTF? No really, are we even friends? I don’t think I’ve ever given you that impression… and if I have, I apologise! I take it back! Why did I even look up? Oh yeah, because you came round specifically to speak with me. I don’t want to speak with you! I have to do some work! Go away!

Was she really asking me if I was pregnant? Oh yeah, she was. This is Mrs No-Tact-Whatsoever we are talking about here. Mrs I’ll-Email-Photos-Of-My-Freshly-Birthed-Baby-Out-Of-My-Vajayjay. What did I expect?

I sort of stammered, “No. Do I look fat or something?”

She carried blithely on.

I mean, even the most tactless of people knows that you never ask about pregnancy, even if it’s staring you in the face. And even the most foot-in-mouth person would have a bit of self-knowledge to understand that asking a non-pregnant person if they’re pregnant is pretty embarrassing, and would STFU and leave the conversation.

BUT NO! She stayed talking for another few minutes!

Jeez. H. C. (Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain. Jeepers. Shiiiiitake mushrooms!)

I actually can’t believe it. I mean, I was feeling pretty bad what with the IVF weight, hormones, and post-miscarriage comfort eating but that just takes the biscuit slice of pizza.

I immediately texted my BFF, T, and my Other Friend (she’s not my BFF but she is awesome). And they all responded with various strains of I can’t believe anyone would be so rude. (Plus a bit of laughing I’m sure. I mean, if it happened to anyone else, I’d be laughing.)

Also T, bless him, sent me the following message: “Well you look gorgeous. Maybe she just thought you looked glowing.”

(There’s a reason I’m sticking with him for life.)

On the plus size side, it’s given me the kick up the not inconsiderable backside to stop wallowing in excuses and lose some weight. I have about two months to go until Orlando and I want to be able to wear a swimsuit in the water park without feeling like a beached whale. (I don’t care how big I am relatively… I feel fat in myself.) It gives me an excuse in my head at least, though I don’t know how long that will last! I stopped weighing myself after the miscarriage as I was too depressed, but I will have to (wo)man up and do it, so at least I can watch the kilos dropping off. (Before you think I’m one of those weird people who doesn’t need to lose weight, at my heaviest pre-IVF I had varied by 14kg, which is a lot when you’re short. And I would hazard I’m 5-10kg above my heaviest now which is nuts. Even more nuts than the nutter.)

So, thought for the day is:

It’s never acceptable to ask someone if they’re pregnant.

It’s just as insulting to ask someone if they’re pregnant whether they were recently pregnant or not. Actually it’s possibly more wounding but less insulting, I guess.

Like this:

31 comments

I f you find the crazy lady repellant spray, please hand it over! I need some for all the crazies in my life too!
And of course, I am so sorry you had to put up with someone who clearly was not thinking! I am always amazed at people’s insensitivity, and I’m sorry you were on the receiving end.

I actually found it funny (she is a nutter) and I’m not feeling too sorry for myself – hopefully it didn’t come across that way! It was more a “Can you believe it? WTF? I totally need to go on a diet… No kidding myself any more!” type thing than a body blow! 😉
I really need that repellent spray! Haha!

I know, he’s a love! 😍 I felt like 💩 but comforted myself with the fact that this woman is absolutely nuts and doesn’t seem to have any kind of appropriateness filter! I’ll get over it! (Must. Stop. Eating. Pizza.)

That is insane! I am so sorry you had to deal with her. Wouldn’t it have been tempting to just spill the whole saga and maybe then she would finally see how foot-in-mouth she had been? This is a wildly inappropriate story! One for the record books.

Oh, that’s terrible! You actually handled the question quite well. I don’t think I would have been able to get anything out of my mouth, probably just blankly staring at her in disbelief. I would say she is NOT the appropriate judge of…well…much…but certainly not your weight! Xo

Well the funny things she’s only back from maternity leave this year and I was thinking “She still looks a bit pregnant”… But I would never dream of saying anything! I told another girl and work and she was gobsmacked! 😂

She sounds terrible, but it sounds like you handled it well. Although, I think if you smacked her you mighty have received a round of applause from the rest of the staff.
I created a monster repellent for some kids I used to babysit. Maybe it would work on crazy people too? (It’s just kids detangler and

For the love of God, what is wrong with people?!
I often find (cue the politically incorrect comment) that non-Brits (mostly Asians – I’m one myself!!, and some European countries) can be *really* tactless at times. I think tact is one of those things that can’t be learnt. You’re either socially aware and have empathy, or you don’t. She clearly needs some on her list to Santa.
Don’t let her make you feel that you need to do anything differently to what you’re doing (unless, of course, you want to!) x

Hahaha. Well I am a bit porky compared to my usual self, but I never expected anyone to comment on it! I know what you mean… I have met some nationalities who are *stereotype alert* less, err, tactful! I have a friend who has actually said to me “I don’t think you should put on any more weight”! 😂 But she’s not slim herself and we are actual friends rather than colleagues so I don’t mind that much! It’s just this woman sort of chases me down and I really hate talking to her! I think she is possibly Spanish – think she told me but I tend to try and erase all interactions from my mind!

Wow! Just wow! I have worked with some special cases in my time so can totally appreciate the scale of her looniness. If you google “what the british mean” and look at the images there is quite a funny decoder for the phrases we use, what we actually mean and how others understand it. It’s worth a look 🙂

I think there are some properly weird people out there. I used to work with some odd people who used to tell me about their erm toilet routines. Utterly disgusting! It was completely unsolicited on my part – in fact I told them in no uncertain terms on numerous occasions that I wasn’t interested – but it took a while for the message to be understood… but you know your “chum” sounds quite something else, after all, she did send er that photo – OMG!!!!!

Hahaha yes! Someone I know once shared a photo of their child’s poo in a potty on Facebook. I was beyond horrified. This lady is already down at my work as “a bit special” (ie avoid). I previously felt I might be being harsh by avoiding her, but now I know I was justified!

I would like to say I’m appalled at her behavior, but having been on the receiving end of plenty of wildly insensitive comments, I’m sad to say this doesn’t surprise me one bit. And in my experience “fine” means “NOT fine” or “mind your own business” in the US and Canada, too (pretty much any English-speaking country), so…..there’s really no excuse for her!

Haha! Well she is foreign in some way. I’m not sure which country she’s from – I have a feeling it’s Spain or Italy. Which would be very disappointing as I’m big fans of both and I don’t want to be worrying that it’s some national affliction! 🙂 I’m sure she’s a special case though!